Leonhard Tietz (March 3 1849 - November 14 1914) was a German department store entrepreneur and art collector of

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish origin.

Biography

Born in

Birnbaum an der Warthe Birnbaum may refer to: Places * Birnbaum an der Warthe, now Międzychód, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland * Kreis Birnbaum, an administrative district of the Grand Duchy of Posen and, later, the Prussian province of Posen * Birnbaum (Frankenw ...

Province of Posen The Province of Posen (german: Provinz Posen, pl, Prowincja Poznańska) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920. Posen was established in 1848 following the Greater Poland Uprising as a successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen, w ...

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

(today

Międzychód Międzychód (, german: Birnbaum) is a town in Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, the administrative seat of Międzychód County. It is located on the southern shore of the Warta river, about west of Poznań. Population is 10,915 (2009). His ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

), Leonhard Tietz was the brother of Oskar Tietz and a founding member of the Tietz Department store dynasty. On 14 August 1879, he opened his first department store in

Stralsund Stralsund (; Swedish: ''Strålsund''), officially the Hanseatic City of Stralsund (German: ''Hansestadt Stralsund''), is the fifth-largest city in the northeastern German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rostock, Schwerin, Neub ...

, with the idea of selling high quality products at fixed prices for cash. He was the first to introduce a

money back guarantee A money-back guarantee, also known as a satisfaction guarantee, is essentially a simple guarantee that, if a buyer is not satisfied with a product or service, a refund will be made. The 18th century entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood pioneered many of ...

. From 1891, a shop of his was to be found in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

. In 1905, his enterprise was transformed into a

joint stock company A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareholders are ...

Art collector

Tietz owned an art collection which included paintings by

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

and

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

. In 1912 he lent a self portrait by van Gogh and a still-life by Cézanne ("Stilleben, Früchte mit Glas und Porsellanschale") to the famous Sonderbund Exhibition in Cologne ( Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler zu Cöln).

Legacy and Loss

After Tietz death, his son Alfred Leonhard Tietz led the Tietz firm. In 1933, the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

came to power in Germany and Jewish businesses were targeted. The Nazi policy of racial discrimination and anti-semitic harassment of Jewish-managed firms hurt the Tietz' department store and other businesses. The business was renamed ''Westdeutsche Kaufhof AG.'' In an " Aryanisation" (the obligatory transfer of Jewish businesses to non-Jewish owners), the Tietz family was forced to sell their shares under market value . They fled Nazi Germany. After the Allied victory, they received some compensation estimated at 5 million DM. Today, the department store chain

Galeria Kaufhof Galeria Kaufhof GmbH was a German department store chain, headquartered in Cologne. It was a member of the International Association of Department Stores from 1930 to 2010, with various CEOs acting as presidents of the Association over time. U ...

is the direct descendant of the tiny shop opened in 1879.

Literature

Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from “Aryanizations” in Nazi Germany
Kilian Huber, Volker Lindenthal, and Fabian Waldinger NOVEMBER 2020

References

External links

* * 1849 births 1914 deaths 19th-century German Jews German economists German businesspeople in retailing 19th-century German businesspeople 20th-century German businesspeople People from the Province of Posen Businesspeople from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania People from Międzychód {{Germany-economist-stub